©2009 Edgar Rivera Colón ALL RIGHTS RESERVED GETTING LIFE IN TWO WORLDS: POWER AND PREVENTION IN THE NEW YORK CITY HOUSE BALL COMMUNITY by EDGAR RIVERA COLÓN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Anthropology Written under the direction of Professor Louisa Schein And approved by __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May, 2009 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Getting Life in Two Worlds: Power and Prevention in the New York City House Ball Community By EDGAR RIVERA COLÓN Dissertation Director: Dr. Louisa Schein This dissertation project is an ethnographic study of the House Ballroom community in New York City. The House Ballroom community is a Black and Latino/a queer and transgender alternative kinship system and dance performance circuit. Specifically, it follows the lives of HIV prevention workers who are deeply embedded in House Ballroom social networks. Based on four years of anthropological fieldwork, I document the way that these community activists fashion meaningful lives in the meeting point between the Ballroom world and the HIV prevention not-for-profit organizations in New York City. It is also an ethnography of the productive failure of the gay and lesbian movement's inability to include working class Black and Latino/a queer communities in developing a political infrastructure to combat HIV/AIDS in New York City. My informants have helped to develop an alternative civil and political infrastructure by combining material and symbolic resources found in the HIV prevention not-for-profit ii organizations and the House Ballroom community. This ethnography documents and analyzes the lives that these House Ballroom prevention activists have forged and the work of political love that animates their professional and Ballroom communities. iii iv Acknowledgements The authorial conceit implicit in Western literary and social scientific canons individuates what are always already collective social products: texts. This ethnographic text is a relentlessly collective act of materialization. Therefore, I have many debts to my fellow co-workers in the vineyard of the word and the deed that I must recognize not only because ethical considerations compel me, but also for the sheer pleasure of recognizing the motley communities that have loved this dissertation into existence. First and foremost, I must recognize my dissertation committee whose heroic patience and intellectual rigor challenged me to take myself as seriously as I took my research subjects. Louisa Schein, my committee chair, has been a mentor par excellence. Her brilliance, invariable faith in my project, and her willingness to see me as a fellow interlocutor in array of intellectual efforts opened up the space for me to undertake this project in my rather meandering and idiosyncratic mode of proceeding. Louisa saved this project from oblivion on many occasions --- even when I thought that oblivion might be a proper fate for this effort. I will never forget those moments: they are true gifts of the Spirit. For these multiple acts of generosity, she remains the “mother” of my academic house --- whether she wants to be or not. Peter Guarnaccia, the medical anthropologist on my committee, is one of most grounded and decent persons I have ever met. His consummate professionalism, long- term commitment to a politically engaged ethnographic practice, and congenital optimism have been invaluable contributions to my growth as a scholar and community researcher. Peter has never failed to ask the difficult and paradigm-shaking question at v the right moment. I indebted to him for fulfilling this role in my research process and write up period. I am deeply gratified to call him the “father” of my academic house. Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas has been a great intellectual resource for me as she shared her wealth of experience and insight with me as a leading Latina ethnographer of Puerto Rican communities in the United States. Ana’s unshakable faith in me as a person and an intellectual has sustained me through the most difficult periods of this process. I have also benefited greatly from Ana’s political clarity and her unwillingness to tolerate reactionary foolishness gladly. It is good to know that I am not the only “ultra-leftist” in the contemporary U.S. academy. Truly, she is my sister-in-arms in “la lucha que nunca cesa.” Carlos U. Decena was the last person to join my committee, but his late arrival in no way attenuated his enormous contributions to this project as an interdisciplinary scholar, an ethnographer of queer Dominicans in the United States, and a fellow HIV/AIDS community researcher. Carlos is one of the sharpest minds I have encountered and his enthusiasm for really thinking through a problem is simply infectious in a very productive way. Carlos is one of my favorite persons to “think with” (to echo Levi- Strauss a bit) and he has quickly become a great friend and comrade as well. Quite simply, he has been a luminous presence in my thinking and writing. I have been lucky beyond reason to have had the good fortune to have assembled such a committee and look forward to repaying their efforts in lasting friendship, admiration, and a life of engaged scholarly and community research. vi Throughout my years as a graduate student in New Brunswick, I had the privilege of being formed by a hosts of scholars whose thoughts and perspectives inform the better insights found in this dissertation. I can only list them briefly here, but they should know my true gratitude for their ideas and great affection for them as persons and intellectuals. In the Anthropology Department, besides the members in my committee who are anthropologists, I have the following two persons to thank: Dorothy Hodgson and Michael Moffat. Outside the department, I am deeply indebted to the following persons for their instruction and guidance: Cheryl Clarke, Ed Cohen, Bruce Robbins, Nancy Hartsock, Leela Fernandes, Ben Sifuentes-Jauregui, Neil Smith, Abena Busia, and David Eng. I have to make special note of Caridad Souza who opened up the world of feminist of color thinking and practice for me and has remained a true friend and fellow-traveler in the ways of discerning the world-making “agape” at the center of the logos. Ashé, my sister, ashé. During my time in New Brunswick, I had the opportunity of teaching a number of years in the Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies first as a lecturer and later as a full-time instructor. Latino Studies really became my second home and I am deeply indebted to the professional formation process that it afforded me. I must thank Aldo Lauria Santiago, the Chair, for his sage advice in negotiating the challenges of graduate school and his culturally appropriate and constant admonitions to me that getting the PhD was only a “union card” and that “I should get on with it already.” Aldo has transformed Latino Studies at Rutgers and many students and faculty will benefit in the years to come from his hard work and clear-sighted leadership capabilities. I was glad to be a witness to this process. My colleagues at Latino studies were a great interlocutors vii and work companions. I am indebted to Ulla Berg (“la danesa maravillosa”), Milagros Denis (“la doctora”), Jose Morales (“el maestro mayor”), Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, and Carlos U. Decena (especially for our weekly strolls on Livingston’s invisible “promenade”). Latino Studies at Rutgers-New Brunswick has been blessed with administrators that go beyond the call of duty. Monica Licort was always generous to me and created a calm, peaceful environment despite the enormous work load and lack of resources we all faced on a daily basis. I always enjoyed and benefited from our numerous spiritual conversations. After her tenure, Sarah O’Meara Gonzalez took the reins in her hands and continued the tradition of efficiency and care that Monica had initiated. I especially want to thank Sarah for tolerating my constant pilfering of her chocolate supplies and our conference room lunch conversations which ran the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. The students I had the privilege of teaching were open-minded, kind, diligent, and ready to think something new. I hope they found something useful in my teaching to carry them through “the long march through the institutions” that professional life after college entails and that “they fight the good fight” for their communities of concern. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am embedded deeply in kinship networks of various kinds. I have been nourished and sustained by all my kin throughout my course work, field research, and writing process. My parents, Luis. A. Rivera Caratini and Mercedes Rivera Morales have loved me despite not quite understanding why I had to spend so much time in school and what all that research I was doing had to do with making a living. My folks are factory people and those experiences have formed my own viii personal and political commitments. They taught me early and well that no one lives or dies alone in this world and that we all best get to the business of being together before things really falls apart. Their ethical clarity, community orientation, and willingness to always add another one of my friends or lovers into “la familia” has allowed me to grow and be generous with my time, friendship, and love. I am very glad to be their son and to continue these traditions into the future. My sister, Lillian Rivera, and her wife, Elsa Vazquez, and their daughter, Olivia Rivera-Vazquez, have been there for me in and out of season.